


A Thorn and a Rose

by yuuen



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angry Pining, Canon Universe, First Kiss, M/M, POV Felix Hugo Fraldarius, POV First Person, Pining Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), fight, just fucking kiss me man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22749073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuuen/pseuds/yuuen
Summary: "It's like youwantme to hate you.""And what if I do.""Then you'll just have to be let down. You might be an insufferable little shit, but I can't hate you. Sometimes I wish I could. It'd make you easier to deal with."Felix, like all of us, wishes Sylvain would shut the hell up about girls already. What's he trying to prove, anyway? Stop it, dude.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 4
Kudos: 64





	A Thorn and a Rose

"Sun's out," Sylvain says, "and you know what that means."

I know what he's going to say. So does Ingrid: she rolls her eyes.

"Girls. So many girls."

I think I actually despise him.

Might be pleasant, the three of us sitting out here on the heath absorbing the first rays of springtime sun, if only that giant idiot wouldn't run his damned mouth. Leave it to Sylvain to break up the moment with his one-track mind and no-filter mouth.

"Don't you think of _anything_ else?" I growl. It comes out even more venomous than even I expect.

Ingrid hums in agreement, mouth too full of meat pie to voice her thoughts at the moment. Mercedes made it. Ingrid's the taste tester. Looks like she approves, otherwise the thing wouldn't be as gone as it is. Flakes of pastry crust dot the blue and white blanket laid out onto the grass.

Sylvain laughs; my venom slides off that easy smile like rainwater off a window. "Nope."

"Figures," I sneer, looking off towards the monastery walls.

Sylvain flicks a crumb my way. It lands on my knee. "Come on, Felix. What's up with you? The weather's nice for a change. No rain; just shine. You'd think maybe even you'd be in a better mood for once."

_"Even_ me?" I shoot back. "The hell's that supposed to mean?"

"Just saying." Sylvain shrugs. Dismissive as always. Content to relax while I sit here heated. Is he oblivious or just an asshole on purpose?

He leans back on his elbows, tilting his face up towards the sky, a morning glory thirsty for sunlight. His red hair is vibrant, outshining the poppies surrounding our picnic blanket island. How idyllic; it makes my skin itch. I allow myself to fixate for a second on the gentle rustle of Sylvain's eyelashes against his sun-warmed cheeks. But only for a second.

I turn to Ingrid. "I'm going back."

"So soon?" She brushes her mouth with the back of her hand. "Don't feel compelled to leave just because Sylvain's a moron." Ah, Ingrid. I can always count on her to agree with me on these crucial matters.

"H-hey!" Sylvain whines, opening his eyes a second later in delayed response. Too busy daydreaming about his precious monastery girls.

"This is a waste of time," I say. "I could be training."

There's a sudden weight on my arm. I shoot my glance downwards, following the line of my arm down to my wrist, where Sylvain's hand is vise-tight, fingers pressed against my racing pulse.

"Come on. Don't be like that."

_Don't_ look _at me like that,_ I want to say, but I tighten my lips into a crooked scowl. _Don't touch me. Don't talk to me._ The heaviness of his touch is painful.

"Stay," he adds, his voice lower, serious. The sun hits his eyes at an angle as he looks up at me. They're the color of honey, shining with earnest pleading. He knows when he's fucked up.

I rip my arm from his hold. I don't want to. I want to. I don't know anymore.

"No," I say flatly.

_"Felix."_

_Don't say my name like that. Don't even say my name._ What gives him the right? I wilt, weak with rage. And in front of Ingrid? I have to stay strong. I twist away; it takes every ounce of energy I have just to stand tall. It's easier to pretend when I don't have to look at him.

"Shut up, Sylvain. I'm going to train. Enjoy your girl-watching."

The first step is rough. The second, easier. Each footfall lands more effortlessly. Every trampled poppy feels like a touch more control gained.

"Good job," I hear Ingrid say faintly behind me.

My blade makes short work of the dummies in the training hall. What once stood tall and proud is now a sad sack of canvas, straw, and splintered wood. Sweat drips off the tips of my hair, down between my shoulder blades underneath my shirt, proof of the last hour's work.

"Felix."

My blood ices for a cutting moment before running fever-hot again. My ears grow warm. Hot. Too hot. What is he doing here? Why does he insist on pestering me! My knuckles flex around the hilt of my sword. I whip around.

Sylvain is in my sights. My boot digs into the packed earth floor. My muscles move without my conscious thought, practiced and thirsty for blood. A roar tears free from my throat. Is that really my voice?

I dash at him, raising my sword. It's a dull training sword, but it can still do damage to the unprepared opponent. Unarmed, unaware... someone innocently sauntering into the training hall to talk to their friend. Someone like Sylvain.

I can't stop myself, though.

Sylvain grabs one of the practice spears from the nearby rack. I can't stop my momentum—my arms are already raised. My sword crashes down and thunks into wood. Sylvain pushes the spear shaft hard, shoving me away from him. I lose my footing and my grip all at once. It's me. I'm the one who wasn't prepared. The shock of the moment hits me as I slam into the ground and the training sword clatters uselessly beside me.

Sylvain sets his spear twirling before pointing it down at my chest.

"Well I was gonna ask you for a little spar, but it looks like you're ahead of me."

I smack the spearhead away from my body. "What do you want?"

He shifts the spear to his other hand and extends his newly freed hand down to me. I want to be proud and get up on my own, but he's honestly knocked the wind out of me. I place my hand in his. His grip is strong, sure as always. I pull myself back to my feet, leaning into him as I regain my balance.

He smells like perfume. Of course. With the number of girls he chats up around the monastery, that shouldn't come as a surprise anymore.

Even so, I linger just a second too long, my hand still in his and my body still too close. And yet he doesn't let go of me, either, nor does he say anything insufferably awkward and oh-so-Sylvain to break up the tension. I'm afraid to look up at him. I don't.

I let go of him and back away.

"You okay?" he asks, his voice just a little too soft, eyebrows perked in the middle. What, is he actually worried about me? "I knocked you on your ass pretty good."

"I'm _fine,"_ I shoot back, brushing the dust from my clothes. "I'm just tired out. Easy to catch me off guard when I'm not at my best."

"Sure," he says, placing the spear back on the rack before turning to me once more. "Except you're always at your best. I shouldn't be able to catch you like that. Seriously, Felix, what's up with you lately?"

He's here to spar, but not with weapons.

"Nothing. Maybe it's that you keep bothering me."

"I'm not stupid, all right. I've known you long enough. I know when you're putting on your usual sour bastard act and when something's up. And I know something's up."

"Oh, go to hell, Sylvain. Maybe you just don't know me as well as you think."

As my voice echoes off the walls, it strikes me how empty the training hall is. The other students cleared out a while ago. I suppose my training level was too intense for them. It's just Sylvain and me here. That's too private for my liking.

He lets out an acidic laugh, throwing his hands up in frustration. "That isn't true and you know it."

"Go on, then." I pluck my sword up off the ground. "Tell me all about what's going on in my head, since you know everything." I stop dramatically mid-step, the tip of the sword pointed skyward. "Oh, that's right. All you know about is girls. Chasing girls, dating girls, looking at girls. You're so useless, Sylvain." I keep walking.

He heaves a loud sigh. "It's like you _want_ me to hate you."

I stop in the center of the training hall, this time not because I want to make a point, but because I simply can't keep going. My limbs are suddenly dead weight when all I want to do is run away. It's not like me to run; I face my battles head-on. But Sylvain always does this. Always makes me want to jump ship. The packed dirt beneath my boots is steady but I feel like a man at the window of a burning building and Sylvain is the fire.

"And what if I do," I say. My mouth is sand. My chest hurts from the incessant jump of my heart. My fingers have long since lost feeling.

"Then you'll just have to be let down. You might be an insufferable little shit, but I can't hate you. Sometimes I wish I could. It'd make you easier to deal with."

I turn to Sylvain. Uncertainty threatens to overtake me. I'm not used to this feeling and yet I know it instinctively: defeat. What is it about this tall, stupid idiot that sends me into a spiral? He should be predictable and easy to handle, to manipulate, but he's only predictable up to a point. We passed that point outside the monastery walls earlier. I knew it, so I walked away.

He stands tall, staring back at me with an unflinching and unexpectedly mature gaze. I meet it. He may not hate me, but he certainly doesn't like me right now and it shows plainly in his eyes. My cheeks burn with an anger unlike any I've felt in recent memory. Every damned day, those same eyes hold nothing but carefree idleness, that feigned stupidity he so indulges in if it means no one will expect anything of him. He talks about girls with that empty look, but ever so often, when Ingrid, Sylvain, and I fall into more serious talks about the future, his honey gaze softens into something warm and beautifully alive for a change. No emptiness, no shallow want for dalliance—only hot-blooded longing as he describes the hypothetical dream girl he wants to spend his life with.

In those moments, he never sees me watching him.

I wish, for once, he'd look at me like that. If conjuring this stern look from him is the closest I can get, then damn it, I'll gladly take his anger. Distaste is a step up from apathy.

"Felix."

There's something in his voice that sends a shiver up my neck. He says my name as a monk does, the Goddess's name on his sinning lips, reverent and intimate and heavy with love. —No. That's not it. I'm merely projecting.

He's suddenly close. Too caught up in my thoughts, I didn't see him close the space between us. It's as if he materialized, as if this Sylvain standing beside me is my mind's conjuring, blocking out the actual Sylvain across the room. But his warmth is real, as is his scent, rose perfume and leather and steel and _him_.

"Why," he whispers, "can't you just ask me to look at you instead?"

"What." My voice sounds far away. My body feels at once heavy and empty. His words have leaped straight from my mind and into his mouth. How does he know...?

"You think I'm stupid," he goes on. "You think I don't notice."

"You don't," I spit. "You don't know what you're talking about." I feel the strength, the confidence to brush him off, rising in me again.

His hand is on my cheek. I flinch away but he only places his other hand on my other cheek, holding me fast and making me look up at him. I won't. I stare straight ahead, eyes on the dip between his collarbones, exposed at the opening of his shirt. Are my cheeks hot because they're warmed by his hands or are his hands warm because of this damned blush?

"Felix."

"Stop it!" I yell. _Stop saying my name! Stop saying it that way! Just stop!_

"You first," Sylvain says. His voice is unbearable, serious and deep, touched with none of the light nonchalance I hate so much. But I hate this more. My eyes sting and my throat tightens; it takes me a moment to realize what this is.

The last time I cried was four years ago. I'm not fucking doing it now. Not because of him.

My eyes meet his. What a careless mistake. I fall apart.

He looks at me that way, the way I've always wanted and thought I could handle. I was wrong. I can't handle it. Were it not for his hands on my face, I'd be back on the ground.

"Don't lie to me," he says. "You can rip me apart with your words all you like. I'm used to it. I can take it. But don't lie to me."

"I'm not—"

His hands are unexpectedly rough; his fingers scrape into my hairline. "Don't."

Frustration roars out of me. My throat is hoarse as I voice it all in a wordless, bestial growl. I'm losing control. That only makes this so much more insufferable. I don't want to face this. And I don't need to.

I summon a shred of strength and shove him away. It's not much—he's still irritatingly close—but it's enough. His eyes widen and his mouth falls open.

"What about _you,_ you coward!" I shout.

"Me?" he shouts back, my anger finally infecting him, cutting through his calm exterior and bursting out of him with that one word.

"You put on this... this act, day after day, pretending you're something you're not just so you can skirt by with ease. It's gotten to the point you buy into your stupid lies, even around me and Ingrid! You can't even be yourself around us."

"Don't turn this around onto me. You're always deflecting."

"I will and I am. You put up this front, chasing skirts any chance you get, and if you're not flirting or sneaking off with some girl, then you're talking about it to anyone who'll listen. You're so transparent. It's all one big act and the most pathetic thing is you believe it."

He laughs. It's a bitter sound and hearing it brings me no comfort. It's not _his_ laugh, that carefree, sweet laugh I miss despite myself when he's not around.

"You're right."

My shoulders lose their tension and I exhale slowly. Of course I'm right.

"We've both been lying then," he states, eyes turned towards the sliver of dirt between us. "To ourselves. To each other. Go figure."

The bells ring, all at once jarringly loud and distant. Students will be filling the monastery grounds after the last gong, flooding into the training hall at any moment.

I swallow hard. Throw down the training sword. Look Sylvain in the eye. Even a half-foot away, I can feel the thrum of his heart, as if there's a single thread of spider's silk connecting us, sternum to sternum, vibrating with unadulterated honesty at last.

"I'm tired of dancing around this," I say. I turn my face up to his. "Just kiss me, you fucking coward."

There's no pretense in his motions as he closes the gap between us once more. His hands are back on my face, but it's different this time. His fingers close around my jawline. His thumb rests at the outer corner of my eye. My lips part just enough to sigh away the heaviness that's been weighing me down since the school year started.

His mouth is on mine. Finally.

I won't pretend I haven't thought about this a hundred—thousand—times. I'm through pretending. I lift my hands and grasp his face in return, holding fast to him like it's the one chance I'll be allowed to touch him this way.

I know he's kissed dozens of girls. My irrational side wants to reach back into time and slice each one of those memories from existence for even intruding into my thoughts at such a crucial, previously perfect moment. But I also know instinctively he's never kissed anyone the way he's kissing me now.

He's done this tons of times; it's obvious from the way he kisses that he knows what he's doing. I don't, but it doesn't stop me from taking the lead in this dance. I've wanted—needed—this for too long. My hands wind into his hair and against the back of his neck, pulling him down towards my waiting mouth. (Why is he so goddamned tall!) It's difficult not to bite him in my need for more.

A small nip here and there, but that only elicits a noise from his throat I've never heard from him before. It sets my body aflame in places I can't bring myself to name.

There's a quick-pulse energy to the way his lips move against mine, a hurried urgency that reminds me we're in a common area and others will be here at any second now. At the same time, it's as if we're in a pocket of time tucked far away from anyone, private and silent save for the soft sound of our lips and shared breaths.

He parts from me, but not before one last, lingering kiss to my top lip. I stare at his mouth, studying every line of his lips, the flushed color they hold post-kiss, the shine of his tongue just out of reach.

The training hall doors open with a rumble. The noise level immediately darts up to a hundred. A group of laughing Golden Deer students tumble in, roaring with laughter and idle chatter, ready to expend some restless energy after sitting in a classroom all day.

Arms held back, Sylvain and I retreat from each other like a pair of hummingbirds, though perhaps not as quickly as we ought to have. I turn my head to the right and grit my jaw. The mask falls back into place, immaculate and detached. The students fill the room around us, mostly oblivious to our presence. A couple of girls stare at us, though. Sylvain runs a hand through his hair and licks his lips. It takes effort not to stare at him do so.

Surrounded as we are, this is steeply awkward.

"Let's go," he says. There's a layer of nervousness painted across his features. He glances around the room, no doubt wondering if anyone saw. If anyone _knows._

It doesn't faze me, however; or at the very least, I'm better at putting up a front.

"Go on without me," I say, voice on the verge of wavering. Sylvain perks an eyebrow. I flick stray hair out of my eyes. "I... I need to get this out of my system."

He laughs, more of a sharp breath through his nostrils than anything else. "Gotcha. Well. You know where to find me."

"Who says I want to find you?" I ask, picking up my sword. My voice isn't shaking anymore.

"Right." He laughs more freely this time. "Whatever you say, Felix." He looks sidelong at me, smiling with a knowing sparkle in his eyes. They're not empty anymore. There's an unspoken promise in them, one not entirely innocent. Chills run down my arms but my neck prickles with uncomfortable heat. What the hell is this feeling?

"See you in a bit, then!" Sylvain finishes up too cheerfully, shrugging off my poisonous words as usual.

"Bastard."

He all-out grins but leaves it at that. He snakes his way through the scattered pairs of students and out of the training hall, leaving me and my sword to vent on whatever poor kid asks me to spar. And once I'm done pouring everything into training, body on fire with exertion and pain, I use the last of my energy to walk back to the dorms.

I pass my room. Pass the boar's. Nowhere to go now but the wall... and Sylvain's door. I give it a long look from floor to ceiling. Study the wood grain. The brass doorknob.

Ah, to hell with this. I rap the edge of my fist against the door in the sharp pattern he knows to equate with my presence— _bang-bang, bang._

Sylvain opens up, perhaps too quickly. He looks me up and down, just once, the same as I did to the door.

We open our mouths at the same time, but I get in first: "Suffice it to say my energies may have been misguided." I'm still halfway out of breath from the intensity of my training. Sweat shines on my face, beads up on the tip of my nose.

"I could've told you that," he replies. The way he leans against the wall just inside the room is peak Sylvain, effortlessly cocky: elbow up, torso lengthened, with a slice of his abdomen on display beneath the hem of his nightshirt.

It takes concentrated internal effort to lift my eyes up to his. "Insufferable half-wit."

"Yeah, yeah. You can tell me all about it once you get in here."

I glance down the long corridor. No students. Just a cat, but even it's watching me. Judging me. And why shouldn't it? I'm the true half-wit for stepping into Sylvain's room. The door closes behind us, leaving only the night ahead.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfic in... a long while. _Long._ Please be gentle.
> 
> Big mood (and the title) came from Lissie's [Further Away (Romance Police)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0FAPa7lNss):  
>  _Need him but you're never gonna keep him  
>  You should get used to this feeling  
> Watch him go let him go_
> 
> _He gets further away  
>  (watch out cause everyone knows  
> he's beauty with pain, a thorn and a rose)  
> With every step that you take  
> (seek help immediately)  
> With every step that you take  
> (he's walking off so casually)_


End file.
